


hiding in plain sight(not hiding)

by shortbreadd



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: A LOT of Angst, F/F, F/M, M/M, but fluff too!!, not a lot of andreil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-24 09:42:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20703905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortbreadd/pseuds/shortbreadd
Summary: Neil Josten is living in a crappy apartment with next to no food, and his only saving grace is Warcross, a game that allows anyone to forget their own lives for just an hour, a day, a year.One thing leads to another, and Neil finds himself with a job offer from Ichirou Moriyama, billionaire and creator of Warcross. He’s hesitant on the offer, but a certain midget blond is there to convince him. What is Neil going to do in this new, too-fast paced world of intrigue, fantasy, and the constant danger of being found lurking around the corner?





	1. Chapter 1

Neil Josten shivered and pulled up his threadbare collar. It was too damn cold to be out and about in New York. His fingers were numb, and his board was running on its last dregs. Neil took a sharp turn and almost scratched a red car, and the driver raised his fist and waved it about angrily. “You almost hit me, you fucking idiot!” He shouted. 

Normally, Neil would have raised his hand in apology, or yelled out a haphazard “sorry,” but the notice on his crappy apartment door had plunged Neil into a terrible mood. 

The paper hovered in the back of his mind, still. 

**72 Hours to pay full rent for two months or vacate apartment room.**

There was no way Neil could get his hands on six-thousand dollars in two days. He barely had enough money to buy a crappy sandwich in a convenience store. Evidence of that poked at his stomach, hollow and shrunken. 

It had been three days since Neil had had a full meal. Seth had managed to scrounge a bag of chips in their room, and they’d shared it in mute bliss. For once, he’d been decent to Neil. That hadn’t lasted, though. 

The frigid New York winds bit into his cheeks, and Neil could feel his nose going numb. A few strands of his color tinted bleached hair escaped the confines of his old beanie. 

Sometimes, Neil regretted bleaching his hair pure white with rainbow ends. It was a sure sign to be noticed by a random passerby, and practically a death sentence to be spotted by his father’s men. Still, it was worth it. 

His mother would have killed him for it. Mary wasn’t here to scream at Neil and beat him, though. His father had made sure of that. 

Neil’s hair might not have been noticed by his father’s men, but people on the street definitely did. When he had dyed it in a fit of grief and recklessness, he hadn’t been thinking of some sort of hidden message to the public eye, but people still saw it that way. He’d had enough shouts of fag, but Neil always ignored those slurs. He wasn’t anything, anyway. 

Neil watched the stoplight go red, then leaned on the side of his board enough that he swerved out of traffic onto the sidewalk. He kicked the board into his hand, then leaned it against the bus stop sign. 

He pulled out a cigarette from his back pocket, then lit it. The warm smoke soon curled up around Neil’s face, and he breathed it in without inhaling the nicotine. Neil closed his eyes against the stinging smoke, and let his mind wander. 

Let his mind go back stink of burning rubber, and gasoline. Back to emptiness in his body, static filling his brain. Neil’s eyes unfocused with memories when his phone dinged with a message. 

It read, _$7000 for the capture of Matthew Habode._ Nowadays, New York was overflowing with crime, and not just the physical kind. Exy might have just been a game, but it had still swept the nation with an obsessive frenzy. 

Notes, Exy’ currency was highly sought after. The hunt for notes was only furthered by the fact that Exy’ creator and CEO, Ichirou Moriyama, didn’t allow purchase of notes using actual money. 

So, officially, the only way to get notes was through good-old-fashioned playing. At least, that was the front Ichirou Moriyama provided. In reality, notes were sold off with real money through the black market and the darker, unknown part of Exy. 

Police didn’t have the time to go after each and every person who broke the law through illegal online purchases, so they sent out a bounty like this one for any civilian to take up once a week. 

Rewards for the capture was what Neil was going after, though. New York had hundreds of bounty hunters just like Neil, hunting for bounties like this one.

Well, maybe not just like Neil. Not everybody knew how to handle a knife and gun since they were twelve years old. 

That was only courtesy of Neil’s whole life spent running from the Butcher of Baltimore, or his father. 

Still, Neil needed this bounty. It had been almost a month since his last successful capture. Seeing as bounty hunting was 90% of his income, Neil had to make this one. 

His job at the tiny diner down the street from his and Seth’s apartment didn’t count. Neil’s boss was constantly finding ways to dock his pay. Neil wasn’t even sure if it was legal for the man to be paying five dollars an hour. 

Probably not, but Neil didn’t have any other job offers for someone who didn’t even have high school graduation papers. With the diner paying so little, Seth just mooching around, promising he’d find a job, and all of his failed bounties, Neil was down to one cup of ramen and a box of spam. 

Neil’s stomach ached at the thought of finally paying off his debts and eating something not instant. Growing up, Neil had always just eaten what his mother had told him to, but eating instant ramen for six weeks in a row was seriously putting a toll on his body.

This bounty wouldn’t just pay off his debts, there’d be a thousand dollars left. 

A thousand dollars was just enough to fund a new identity. Maybe not enough to get a plane ride, but Neil could hitchhike his way to another city. 

Still, he liked being Neil. He liked the little space he’d carved for himself in a couple of months. Hell, he even liked Seth, however how much of an asshole he could be notwithstanding. 

New York had been the first place that Neil had been able to play Exy again. The glasses he owned were shitty and used, like everything else he had, but he still played. It was the only escape Neil had from the pitiful reality he lived. 

The cigarette burned down to the filter. When the light turned green, Neil kicked the board and with a dying whine, it started again. 

Behind him, the cigarette stub glowed for a second before extinguishing in the wet gutter, in the city that never slept.


	2. II

When Neil walked into the cozy cafe, a blast of warm air hit his numb nose, and he exhaled. Neil ordered the cheapest thing on the menu; a small black coffee, and sipped at it slowly. In the corner of his eye, he watched a woman in a booth. 

Neil could tell that she was the one to watch out for. Neil pretended to stare at his coffee while taking in the sight of everybody in the cafe. 

Not everybody studied their surroundings the way Neil did. In fact, most people forgot details as soon as they took them in. Someone sat next to a woman, looked at her clothes, then immediately forgot what she was wearing. 

Maybe Neil had been like that once; ignorant and oblivious of his surroundings. That had been beaten out of him by his mother on the run. 

Neil watched as a tall man walked into the shop and straight to the woman. Immediately, the woman sat up and hushed words were exchanged. Neil opened his beat up phone, and pulled up the phone version of Exy. 

Normally, you could use your phone as a way to play Exy without the glasses, but it wasn’t very popular, seeing as the glasses used to run Exy were lightweight and easy to carry around. 

You could collect notes through side quests; change your avatar’s appearance, but Neil was only interested in viewing other people’s profile using the phone’s camera. 

However, Neil used a bastardized version of the mobile version. He’d isolated the app from his regular version of Exy, and altered it so that along with people’s avatar, Neil could access the people who had made the avatar. 

Everyone leaves a trail, Abram. The words repeated over and over in Neil’s head as he typed in _PRIVATE,_ Neil had learned from a life on the run that no matter how careful one was, they always left some sort of mark. 

It had been harder a couple of years ago, though. Not everybody used the same program. Neil had had to search for a common platform to find people. Today, though, everybody was connected by Exy. 

That didn’t really include Neil, though. He did have an account, but he’d hacked it months ago in a different way from the app he had on his phone. Neil had the account altered so that whenever someone viewed his profile, it showed a completely randomized username and avatar. Everyone saw Neil differently in Exy. 

His profile always proclaimed **Open,** to not look suspicious. What Neil was looking for now, however, was people in Private mode. 

In Private mode, nobody could view your profile, or interact with you in Exy. Almost nobody in the general public was on Private. In a little cafe like the one Neil was in, the chances of more than one person being on Private were infinitely small. 

That was, everyone but Neil. He’d hacked his Exy account months ago. That was probably why Neil was still on level 24. If he didn’t have a hacked account, he probably would have been around level 80. 

Neil swept his phone discreetly around the entire building in the search of somebody on private mode. The program he’d downloaded scanned each person in the cafe’s profile. 

Everything from their appearance to what power ups they currently had popped up on Neil’s phone, but he swiped past all of them. 

And just like he’d suspected, the man who’d just walked in and the woman he’d met were on Private. That was a guaranteed guilty sign. Just to be sure, though, Neil pulled up a picture of Habode.

_Yup, that’s definitely him._

Neil watched Habode and the-woman-who-was-probably-a-criminal exchange a few more words, and stayed there sipping his now-cold coffee until the man walked out of the shop. 

The woman stayed a few more minutes, and Neil took that opportunity to question her on Habode’s whereabouts then. 

It’d be no use to attack Habode now. From the police report Neil had read, Habode wasn’t just someone who broke the law by selling notes. He also had a record of gang fights. Neil might have knives and a gun, but he tried to avoid using them on a job. 

If he was doing jobs for the police, they probably wouldn’t be pleased to find out that Neil had seven knives and an unregistered semi-automatic. 

Most of the times, Neil didn’t mind his short stature, but it was in fights that provided a disadvantage. Almost all of his opponents had longer reach than him, and more muscle mass. 

Neil had spent all of his life running, so facing threats head-on was foolish. It was easier and safer to sneak up on Habode, and surprise him. 

The woman didn’t look shocked to see Neil walking up to her. 

“Where is the man you were speaking to going?” He asked.

She looked unimpressed. 

The time slot to surprise Habode was narrowing. Neil _had_ to get this bounty. It was the last chance. 

It killed him to say it, but there weren’t any choices left. 

“Please. I need to know where he’s going.” Neil whispered. “There’s a bounty on his capture. I can transfer $1,500 to you in a week.” 

Now the woman looked contemplative. After a moment of tense waiting, she nodded, and motioned for Neil to come closer. 

“He’s going down to a shop in an alleyway near this shop. Get out, turn right, and keep walking until you see an alley with converse hanging from the lines.” 

Neil nodded, and started to turn away, and a cold hand caught his wrist. “If you don’t have the money by Friday, I’ll find you.” She threatened. 

He stopped himself from rolling his eyes.

Threats were just words. Neil hadn’t just endured worse threats, he’d had people go through them. His own body bore the proof. 

The cafe’s door jingled cheerfully when Neil pushed it open and ran out down the slippery sidewalks of New York in search of a criminal.


End file.
